She can’t call in sick again the following day, she knows, not this close to the end of term; so she leaves the house after making sure it’s all unplugged. She shuts the spare bedroom door behind her – the Machine’s room, she thinks, as she does it – and checks the locks on her front door twice. She doesn’t know why. The Machine’s not going anywhere.
The heat hits her like a wall. Lots of the kids have already ducked out of school early. They’re on the cliffs, just down from the bit that’s become famous for suicides. Only a few a year, but that’s all that’s needed for fame. More than one and you’re suddenly notorious. It’s only twenty feet lower, but it ducks inwards at the base. No rocks to land on, just water. And this is the part of the island where the water’s at its bluest, and for a second, when you look at it, you can see what the island used to be: the sun glinting off the breaks, the cold blue that runs to you-don’t-know-how-deep. She recognizes some of the kids, but there’s no point in chastising them, because they’ll just jump and hit the water, knowing she will never follow them. They stand on the edge of the rocks, risking falling by just being there, given how chalky and loose the ground is, and then they wind up like toys, before springing off the edge, their limbs splayed, cycling and pounding the air as they fly. There’s a smack as they hit the water one by one, before dragging themselves out and starting the climb up the scree slope next to the point, then the climb up the chalky sides, a long steep path back to the top. And then the process begins again, repeated ad infinitum. Beth watches them for a few minutes. She wonders what happens to them after this.
At school, the kids who have turned up are restless. They know what’s coming. No chance of getting through to them in the final two days, if anybody ever tries. It’s easier to let them do their own thing. Takes the pressure off the teachers, takes the pressure off the kids to learn. Everybody accepts that these are days of failure. Still, Beth knows that she probably won’t be back here, even if the kids don’t yet. Her plan, when Vic is well again, is to go somewhere that’s used to the heat. To take advantage of the low prices, to buy up something on an island somewhere else, where they’re built for the heat. Teach in a school there. She’s thinking of a particular place – it’s the sort of dream people had when she was a kid herself, to pack up and move out to the tropics – but she doesn’t want to over-think it. She’s barely researched it, in case it’s tainted. Tempting fate and all that.
And now there’s extra reason: the Machine. She thinks about it in her flat, like some growth. Mould. Cancer. Waiting in the room, and somehow alluring, persuasive, even. She wants to get away from it suddenly, because it’s a reminder. There’s more to it, maybe. But she doesn’t want to think about it. Back of her mind, until she gets home.
Laura approaches her in the corridor. Feeling better? she asks.
Barely, Beth says.
Those last few days are a killer, aren’t they? You always feel as if your body’s giving up early. She turns and walks with Beth, not breaking step. Are you like me, always getting ill at the end of term? It’s like everything in me says, Oh, now you can be ill. She reaches out and holds Beth’s arm, like a doctor comforting a patient’s loved one. You can be ill on Saturday, she says. You have my permission. She laughs. I can’t, Beth thinks. Saturday’s when I need to be at my best.
They pass some year-ten boys fighting, and they get in between them, pulling them apart. Used to be that they couldn’t physically intervene, but here the rules are different. They have to be. One of the children is clutching a ruler, holding it flat against his palm, using it as some sort of blade. A hard edge on it. The other has thick welts on his back, and his shirt’s torn and pulled up over his hips. Beth frogmarches them both down to the Head’s office, where there are already children waiting, all in similar states of disrepair. She sits them down in front of the receptionist.
Don’t give her any shit, Beth says. They both smirk at her swearing. And don’t smirk at me. I’m sick of you both. Beth can’t remember either of their names, as she doesn’t teach them, but she’s sure that they’re regular troublemakers. She’s seen them before, always sitting here. Waiting.
By the time she gets back to her classroom there’s a note on her desk. It’s from Laura.
It’s going to be a busy couple of days, it reads. See you outside the gates tomorrow at three?
It’s an invitation, not a question. Beth breathes in. She looks at a picture of Vic that she keeps in the drawer of her desk. Two days left.